IT ALL used to be so simple. A nice roast on Sunday, cold meat and salad on Monday, Tuesday mince up the rest of the leftover meat and knock up a nice, comforting pie. A few staple recipes to fill Wednesday and Thursday, which we probably rotated week after week, then fish on Friday. And you were done.

The shopping was simple too. You might have had around 5,000 different products to choose from in your local supermarket. Today, some of the larger supermarkets stock a staggering 40,000 different lines. And while you wade through this ocean of choice, you can’t just look for what you need. You now need to weigh up the impact your choice has.

Will buying this one help struggling coffee bean producers in Ecuador? Will choosing that one cut down on food miles – or will the fact that it was grown in a heated glasshouse in this country be even worse on the carbon footprint front than the food miles expended on flying it here from Africa? To add to this there is also farm animal welfare. We are, after all, famously a nation of animal lovers.

Survey after survey shows that people really are concerned about the welfare of animals. But making decisions here can be just as tricky, when so much has conspired to distance us from the realities of livestock farming.

Anyone over the age of 50 remembers when butcher’s shops still flourished on our high streets and we all knew what a dead animal looked like.

Now, for the greater majority of us, our only encounter with the animal is viewing neatly portioned bits of it through clear shrink-wrap packaging. Changing lifestyles in the 1970’s and 80’s had an impact too. Two parents working, no time to cook – and cheap travel sending families abroad to exotic climes rather than spending their holidays in the British countryside. While we are faced with dilemmas when we shop, so was the country’s leading animal welfare charity, the RSPCA.

Overall, the RSPCA believes that whether an animal is born or reared indoors or outdoors, the key to good animal welfare is good farming – which includes good stockmanship, in an environment that meets the animal’s needs.

Hens, for example, must have a secluded place to lay their eggs in comfort and safety. They need to be able to bathe and scratch, they need to be able to perch and roost.

So when you shop, if farm animal welfare is one of your concerns – look for the RSPCA’s Freedom Food logo, which means that whatever the system, the animal will have been covered by RSPCA welfare standards at every stage of its life – on farm, in transport and at the abattoir.

So while you are still trying to make up your mind about which brand of coffee, which packet of biscuits and whether you will opt for homegrown or imported vegetables, you at least have a clear steer when you buy your meat, salmon, poultry and eggs.